City thanked for quick response

By Junious Smith III / Staff writer

Published: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 at 07:35 PM.

Johnson said KDPS strategically places employees within the community to help with response time.

“We have police officers and firefighters in specific zones so we’ll be able to help out the best way we can in any given district,” Johnson said. “In particular, with the fire department, if there’s a fire we’ll send all available units to the fire to resolve the situation.

“We also have a ‘two in, two out’ policy, where comparably trained firefighters stay behind in case of self-rescue. In years past, fire departments across the nation would respond to calls and put each person in the structure to mitigate the fire. Some firefighters became incapacitated and needed to be rescued, but didn’t have the resources to rescue themselves. (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) instituted a policy to have a certain amount of resources outside and personnel with the sole purpose of rescuing a firefighter who became incapacitated inside.”

KPS Director Rhonda Barwick said the organization has employees ready at any time during business hours — from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday — and on standby when the complex is closed to the public.

“If we’re on duty, power outages are always a priority,” Barwick said. “We have four crews and the first one to get there is dispatched to it. If an event happens after hours and someone is on call, they’re required to return a phone call within 15 minutes and given up to 45 minutes to get to the complex to get necessary equipment to fix an issue. Some will even drive vehicles home to be more responsive to the citizens.

“I’m proud to say they do much better than what their required response times are and they were able to respond quickly to Ms. Turlington.”

Junious Smith III can be reached at 252-559-1077 and Junious.Smith@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JuniousSmithIII.

For Jennifer Turlington, a quiet Friday afternoon almost turned into a disaster.

“We were sitting in the living room and heard a noise,” Turlington said. “I thought the dog or kids were playing with the garbage disposal and my husband got up to see what was going on because the lights were flickering a bit. He was walking toward the family room and saw the entryway where big sparks started flying and smoke started coming out of the meter and into the house. He said there was something wrong with it, hit the circuit breaker and we got everyone out of the house.”

In a rush, Turlington called 911, who came almost as soon as she dialed the number.

“The whole time I was on the phone with 911, I was praying the house wouldn’t go up in flames,” she said. “I looked at my phone, and the entire call lasted about 2 minutes and 43 seconds. No sooner than I hung up with the dispatcher, the first fire truck came in. It turned out there was a short in the electric meter and it started to pop, sizzle and burn. We were definitely lucky.

“The city of Kinston utility came in and cut the power so the fire department could do what they needed to and stayed as a precaution. The electric company did repairs, the code enforcement inspected it, and we were only without power for about 3 or 4 hours. We were very impressed, not just with the reaction time but the service. The linemen really went above and beyond the line of duty.”

KDPS Director Bill Johnson said both the fire and police departments have protocol for emergencies and try to provide the same response time at any hour of the day.

“When a citizen calls in with a critical situation, we respond with emergency traffic,” Johnson said. “With some service requests, which don’t require emergencies like asking an officer to come to the home or check a smoke detector, we’ll follow routine traffic — we won’t turn on sirens and we’ll obey the speed limit and traffic signals. It depends on the request.”

Johnson said KDPS strategically places employees within the community to help with response time.

“We have police officers and firefighters in specific zones so we’ll be able to help out the best way we can in any given district,” Johnson said. “In particular, with the fire department, if there’s a fire we’ll send all available units to the fire to resolve the situation.

“We also have a ‘two in, two out’ policy, where comparably trained firefighters stay behind in case of self-rescue. In years past, fire departments across the nation would respond to calls and put each person in the structure to mitigate the fire. Some firefighters became incapacitated and needed to be rescued, but didn’t have the resources to rescue themselves. (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) instituted a policy to have a certain amount of resources outside and personnel with the sole purpose of rescuing a firefighter who became incapacitated inside.”

KPS Director Rhonda Barwick said the organization has employees ready at any time during business hours — from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday — and on standby when the complex is closed to the public.

“If we’re on duty, power outages are always a priority,” Barwick said. “We have four crews and the first one to get there is dispatched to it. If an event happens after hours and someone is on call, they’re required to return a phone call within 15 minutes and given up to 45 minutes to get to the complex to get necessary equipment to fix an issue. Some will even drive vehicles home to be more responsive to the citizens.

“I’m proud to say they do much better than what their required response times are and they were able to respond quickly to Ms. Turlington.”

Junious Smith III can be reached at 252-559-1077 and Junious.Smith@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JuniousSmithIII.